This work investigates the relationship between goals and mitigation behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Study 1 identified goals ascribed to following and violating mitigation-related indications. Study 2 investigated the structure of and link between COVID-related goals and behaviors in a large community sample. Our results showed substantial relationships between goals and behaviors. Goals were best described by a bi-dimensional structure, whereas behaviors clustered into a three-component structure. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated the incremental validity of goals in the prediction (...) of behaviors. Network analysis suggested that goals imbued with social content were more directly related to both risky and preventive behaviors. Motivational aspects emerged as important contributors to the organization of behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Il volume comprende i saggi dei seguenti autori: Corrado Mangione, Enrico Bellone, Giulio Giorello, Marco Mondadori, Gabriele Lolli, Silvano Tagliagambe, Francesco Barone, Umberto Bottazzini, Vincenzo Cappelletti, Domenico Costantini, Piero Mangani, Carlos Minguez, Alberto Pasquinelli, Rossano Pancaldi, Mario Servi.

When subjects view stimulation of a rubber hand while feeling congruent stimulation of their own hand, they may come to feel that the rubber hand is part of their own body. This illusion of body ownership is termed ‘Rubber Hand Illusion’ . We investigated sensitivity of RHI to spatial mismatches between visual and somatic experience. We compared the effects of spatial mismatch between the stimulation of the two hands, and equivalent mismatches between the postures of the two hands. We created (...) the mismatch either by adjusting stimulation or posture of the subject’s hand, or, in a separate group of subjects, by adjusting stimulation or posture of the rubber hand. The matching processes underlying body ownership were asymmetrical. The illusion survived small changes in the subject’s hand posture, but disappeared when the same posture transformations were applied to the rubber hand. Mismatch between the stimulation delivered to the subject’s hand and the rubber hand abolished the illusion. The combination of these two situations is of particular interest. When the subject’s hand posture was slightly different from the rubber hand posture, the RHI remained as long as stimulation of the two hands was congruent in a hand-centred spatial reference frame, even though the altered posture of the subject’s hand meant that stimulation was incongruent in external space. Conversely, the RHI was reduced when the stimulation was incongruent in hand-centred space but congruent in external space. We conclude that the visual–tactile correlation that causes the RHI is computed within a hand-centred frame of reference, which is updated with changes in body posture. Current sensory evidence about what is ‘me’ is interpreted with respect to a prior mental body representation. (shrink)

In juxtaposition with the myth and tragedy of Ovid’s Medea, this paper investigates the possibility within the Kantian conception of agency of understanding moral evil as acting against one’s better judgment. It defends the thesis that in Kant self-deception, i. e. the intentional untruthfulness to oneself, provides the fundamental structure for choosing against the moral law. I argue that, as Kant’s thought progresses, self-deception slowly proceeds to become the paradigmatic case of moral evil. This is discussed with regard to two (...) important topics in his later moral philosophy: the doctrine of radical evil and the crucial role of the duty of truthfulness in ethics. The inquiry into Kant’s theory of conscience unfolds both against this theoretical background and in light of its historical roots in the polemic against casuistry and probabilism. This contribution closes with a brief look at the tools Kant implements to counter this tendency to self-deception in moral judgment and particularly at the role casuistry plays within his conception of moral education. (shrink)

In the multi-agent setting, it is relevant to model group dynamics of agents, and logic has proved a good tool to do so. We propose an epistemic logic, L-DINF-E, that allows one to formalize what are the beliefs formed by a group of agents, where several groups exist and agents can pass from a group to another one. We introduce a new modality which allows an agent to reason about the beliefs of other agents. This allows us to model aspects (...) of the “Theory of Mind”, understood as the set of social-cognitive skills involving the ability to attribute and reason about mental states, desires, beliefs, and knowledge of agents. In this paper, we present the logic L-DINF-E and illustrate how it can be used to solve “false-belief tasks”, i.e., tests in which an agent should understand that some other agent may develop, under some circumstances, false beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper, in line with the general framework of value-sensitive design, we aim to operationalize the general concept of “Meaningful Human Control” in order to pave the way for its translation into more specific design requirements. In particular, we focus on the operationalization of the first of the two conditions investigated: the so-called ‘tracking’ condition. Our investigation is led in relation to one specific subcase of automated system: dual-mode driving systems. First, we connect and compare meaningful human control with (...) a concept of control very popular in engineering and traffic psychology, and we explain to what extent tracking resembles and differs from it. This will help clarifying the extent to which the idea of meaningful human control is connected to, but also goes beyond, current notions of control in engineering and psychology. Second, we take the systematic analysis of practical reasoning as traditionally presented in the philosophy of human action and we adapt it to offer a general framework where different types of reasons and agents are identified according to their relation to an automated system’s behaviour. This framework is meant to help explaining what reasons and what agents play a role in controlling a given system, thereby enabling policy makers to produce usable guidelines and engineers to design systems that properly respond to selected human reasons. In the final part, we discuss a practical example of how our framework could be employed in designing automated driving systems. (shrink)

The contribution analyses the third part of the "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte", written by Kant in 1755, and focuses in particular on the ontological nexus that relate the activity of the soul to the material quality and to the morphology of the organic body. In the course of the analysis, the presence of two argumentative logics of Kant’s discourse will be highlighted. For the first one, the body is a limitation of the spirit, which would fully develop its cognitive faculties if it (...) were not connected to any matter. For the second one, on the contrary, the connection with the body becomes a necessary condition for the spirit to be given the faculty to exercise its own power of thought. (shrink)

This contribution retraces the most significant moments of a debate that has seen researchers from different disciplinary areas reflect on schizophrenia, in particular on the symptom of thought insertion, with the conceptual tools of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In the course of this report, some problematic aspects of the interpretations of the "Critique of Pure Reason" promoted in the aforementioned debate are highlighted. The last part of the contribution presents some considerations on the relationship between critical philosophy and madness.

Contemporary brain reading technologies promise to provide the possibility to decode and interpret mental states and processes. Brain reading could have numerous societally relevant implications. In particular, the private character of mind might be affected, generating ethical and legal concerns. This paper aims at equipping ethicists and policy makers with conceptual tools to support an evaluation of the potential applicability and the implications of current and near future brain reading technology. We start with clarifying the concepts of mind reading and (...) brain reading, and the different kinds of mental states that could in principle be read. Subsequently, we devise an evaluative framework that is composed of five criteria-accuracy, reliability, informativity, concealability and enforceability-aimed at enabling a clearer estimation of the degree to which brain reading might be realistically deployed in contexts where mental privacy could be at stake. While accuracy and reliability capture how well a certain method can access mental content, informativity indicates the relevance the obtainable data have for practical purposes. Concealability and enforceability are particularly important for the evaluation of concerns about potential violations of mental privacy and civil rights. The former concerns the degree with which a brain reading method can be concealed from an individual’s perception or awareness. The latter regards the extent to which a method can be used against somebody’s will. With the help of these criteria, stakeholders can orient themselves in the rapidly developing field of brain reading. (shrink)

In this paper we will address the following points: (1) we will question the general belief that Kant’s philosophical approach has a geographical character, by showing how critical philosophy and physical geography establish, in their respective systems, two inverse relationships between the rational and the aesthetic form of spatiality; (2) we will argue that cartography still plays a role in the realization of a scientific system of cognition, and that this role consists in guiding this very realization; (3) lastly, we (...) will develop the hypothesis that the map of the cognitive faculties, exemplified by the transcendental topic, is part of a device aimed at keeping the subject from the adventures of thought typical of dogmatism. (shrink)

This paper discusses a recent puzzle concerning the notions of boundary parthood and dependence, and offers a new solution. The puzzle was originally presented by Jeroen Smid and successively elaborated upon by Claudio Calosi. I first reformulate some of the troublesome premises. Particularly, whereas Smid and Calosi discuss the puzzle in terms of an underspecified notion of dependence, I propose to construe it in terms of the notion of grounding. In this manner, the dependence relation inherently carries an asymmetry, and (...) we can effectively utilize its four places. The solution I advance precisely takes advantage of this feature of dependence. My proposal avoids the contradiction while still respecting the intuitions driving the original premises. It is also fully compatible with boundaries being only generically dependent on their wholes. (shrink)

The property of fundamental mechanical theories which allows to treat compound objects as particles under suitable conditions is considered. It is argued that such a property, called compoundation invariance, is a nonreleasable property of any mechanical theory not declaring to which elementary constituents it applies. Compoundation invariance is discussed in the framework of Bohmian mechanics. It is found that standard Bohmian mechanics satisfies the requirement of compoundation invariance, with some reservation in the case of compound objects with spin. On the (...) contrary that requirement is violated when additional terms are added to the standard velocity. (shrink)

In this contribution, we first discuss the aspects of the analytic method conceived by Kant in the Deutlichkeit that differentiate it from the Wolffian method and relate it to the Newtonian method. Compared to the philosophical tradition, the task of analysing concepts appears profoundly changed. Since Kant aims philosophy towards the world, he considers concepts as something given and intends to discern their characteristic marks by observing their usual applications. Although Kant abandons any attempt to define concepts nominally, he still (...) gives great relevance to words to the extent that concepts, according to him, acquire their meaning in the linguistic usage. We will also point out how for Kant the linguistic usage makes the analysis of concepts anything but easy and how a hermeneutic process is necessary for its completion. In distinguishing philosophical signs from mathematical signs, Kant provides the semiotic reasons that underlie his recourse to hermeneutics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the abbé de Saint-Pierre as a mediator of ideas between France and England. The political proposal of the Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe circulated in Great Britain just before the signing of the peace treaties of Utrecht and Aachen, attesting the influence that Saint-Pierre’s proposal exerted on British thought and politics. The abbé was engaged in dialogue with Quaker pacifists and, in particular, with the projects put forward by William Penn and John Bellers, (...) both theorists of a ‘European State’. After examining the relationship between Penn’s Essay and Saint-Pierre’s ideas, the article will demonstrate how elements of Bellers’s Some Reasons found their way into the Projet with numerous convergences of lexicon and content suggesting that the abbé had drawn inspiration from Bellers. Quaker ideas on politics had a greater effect on Saint-Pierre’s conception of peace and international relations than is commonly recognized. In fact, there was a constant intellectual exchange between the abbé and British political, economic and philosophical thought. (shrink)

The difference between carnap's and de finetti's conceptions of probability does not consist of a couple of requirements, As carnap asserted in a letter to de finetti. The paper is intended to give a theoretical justification for this denial. In order to do this, The author stresses the difference between (tolerant) objectivism and (radical) subjectivism. The difference is discussed in statistical terms. The discussion is faced with respect to predictive inferences, A type of statistical inference that both carnap and de (...) finetti advocate in many occasions. (shrink)

We introduce a suitable notion of eight-shaped curve in the product S × ℝ of a Suslin line S for the real line ℝ, and we prove that if S is dense in itself, then every collection of pairwise disjoint eight-shaped curves in S × ℝ is countable. This parallels a folklore result which holds for the real plane.

In “Engineering Transcendence” (Prisco 2004) I argued that science may someday develop the capability to resurrect the dead and build (and/or become) God(s), and proposed to base a “transhumanist1 religion” on this idea. I also argued that the ultra‐rationalist, aseptic engineering language dear to most technophiles does not seem able to have an emotional impact on the majority of other people.

Any progress in shaping up an externalist psychiatry, so previous discussion suggested, must begin from questions about the ontology of social causation. So far, research and theory have adhered to a naturalistic approach to the social causes of illness, concentrating mostly on the ‘social determinants of mental health’ (inequality, discrimination, housing insecurity, etc.). The paper starts with an assessment of ‘social determinants’ through the lens of epidemiology and critical psychiatry. It illustrates existing practical and political approaches that fight these constraints (...) and it highlights their therapeutic value. It argues, though, that a focus on social determinants is not sufficient for fully realizing externalism because a great portion of sociogenic illness remains causally indeterminate. Alongside political action, externalism requires a social etiology that is established by virtue of the meaning that it holds for patients, rather than by virtue of its capacity to identify objective social causes of illness. This entails abandoning naturalism about social causation and embracing constructivism. The paper shows that this methodological shift is less contradictory and more effective than it is commonly imagined. Drawing from further anthropological evidence, it concludes that only by lending support to projects that balance a focus on constraints with social construction will psychiatry be truly externalist. At stake is a prospect of effective treatment for sociogenic illness for the countless in struggle. (shrink)

Rights proclamations are often alleged to be meaningless – ‘nonsense upon stilts’. But what makes a rights proclamation meaningful? In general, I argue, meaningful rights proclamations presuppose the existence of both a duty – directed from some party to another – and an interest whose protection is at least a non-redundant element in the justification of why the duty exists. Further conditions of meaningfulness apply for specifically moral rights proclamations. Here, the interest must be of such moral relevance to ground, (...) by itself, the duty and the duty must be demonstrably compatible with other mandatory components of morality. Neither of these conditions applies to rights proclamations in the legal realm. For a legal right proclamation to be meaningful, it is sufficient that there is or there ought to be, in the legal community at stake, a legal obligation whose justification includes, as a non-redundant element, the interest of some party. (shrink)

A constructivisation of the cut-elimination proof for sequent calculi for classical, intuitionistic and minimal infinitary logics with geometric rules—given in earlier work by the second author—is presented. This is achieved through a procedure where the non-constructive transfinite induction on the commutative sum of ordinals is replaced by two instances of Brouwer’s Bar Induction. The proof of admissibility of the structural rules is made ordinal-free by introducing a new well-founded relation based on a notion of embeddability of derivations. Additionally, conservativity for (...) classical over intuitionistic/minimal logic for the seven (finitary) Glivenko sequent classes is here shown to hold also for the corresponding infinitary classes. (shrink)

We propose that sleep is linked to synaptic homeostasis. Specifically, we propose that: (1) Wakefulness is associated with synaptic potentiation in cortical circuits; (2) synaptic potentiation is tied to the homeostatic regulation of slow wave activity; (3) slow wave activity is associated with synaptic downscaling; and (4) synaptic downscaling is tied to several beneficial effects of sleep, including performance enhancement.